


Enterprise to Mission Control

by epicionly



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27108877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epicionly/pseuds/epicionly
Summary: They need each other, and it’s the raw, almost selfish part of it as much as it is giving.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	Enterprise to Mission Control

It starts with being forcefully evicted from the shuttle bathroom with no windows. There’s a guy sitting next to him who looks like he came out of the wrong end of a bar fight and McCoy has a severe bout of aviophobia that nobody in this place seems to respect. Hey, it’s what it is: everyone’s got their own ways of coping. Bathroom is one of them. And no matter how calm McCoy tries to get once he has to come to terms with where he is and why, it doesn’t get easier. He doesn’t think less, and he sure as hell doesn't picture being crammed like a sardine in a tin can flying towards the goddamn sun any less.

What the damn fool hell was he thinking, getting on a goddamn shuttle into space? He hates flying. He hates risk. He hates things he can't control, things he doesn't know, this entire situation. And leaving before Jo even got home, that’s the worst of it.

“Think of it this way,” Jocelyn had said, and hadn’t she been shrewd enough for the both of them. Bags already packed for him, divorce papers all trussed up and just in need of a signature, and an argument prepared he couldn't finagle his way out of because it'd all come down to this. “You get out while I pick Joanna up from school, I can do damage control. You still got that Starfleet offer, don't you?”

Things go downhill really fast, McCoy thinks, if that bathroom is going to be the last good thing about his life.

Must be some grown man, to preemptively avoid the tears his own daughter was going to cry. Must think he’s so great. All McCoy can think is that this is it. This is where he sells his damn soul to the devil because he’s trapped in a bucket of bolts straight towards the very thing he’s been cursing out his entire life. Man wasn't meant to lift even so much as a pinky off Earth, and now McCoy is flying off the ground into the sun.

Bar Fight Victim looks at him without blinking. By instinct, McCoy decides he's trouble, and if McCoy gets involved, he may as well regret it for the rest of his life. Something about the guy strikes him that way. Maybe it's the fact that he tracks McCoy with his eyes first. Maybe it's that he has one of those faces. McCoy, feeling his stomach reel even after he sits, decides he needs to warn him, because McCoys have that Southern hospitality and he was at least raised right.

“I might throw up on you,” McCoy tells him. Objectively, the kid's not too bad to look at if you get past the cosmetic damage. His cuts'll heal clean because dermal regen’s a cure-all for everything except the springtime of youth, but it’ll heal nothing about McCoy’s brand of self-loathing.

There's a song and dance, and somewhere along the line, McCoy figures that whatever impression he's made is going to last him some.

“Leonard McCoy,” he says, and offer him a drink.

The man offers him a bewildered blink. “Jim Kirk,” he grimaces back, but he downs the offer of the flask, and he doesn’t look like he’s going to hurl, so that’s a win.

\--

McCoy sees him--shit you not--three hours later after processing and all that administrative jazz. The kid plastered face front on one of the two regulation beds, still dressed in civvies.

McCoy checks the name in his memory with the name on the PADD again just to be sure.

"Jim Kirk your stripper name then?" he asks, and tosses it to the other bed in the room. He sets his stuff down.

Jim groans. "F'ck off," he says. "M'not moving."

The thing with McCoy is that he likes people who actively dislike him in the moments. Honesty goes a long way.

"Not dying there, Jim?" he asks, even more cheerfully. He might even turn on the lights some.

Jim turns his face, almost petulant, before he turns it back down, half-way. “Real romantic, Bones," Jim snarks. “You pick everyone up that way?”

\--

Of course, he's going to regret that soon enough.

\--

As far as McCoy is concerned, there are two reasons for the entire incoming doom of the entire human race and the fact that space is a disease and sneaky and utterly suspicious: one is space itself and humanity’s desire to go where they aren't biologically meant to, which is tied to a whole heaping of issues around identity and setting. The latter is what Jim wholly represents. McCoy isn’t a literature major, but abstract concepts about the big empty nothingness you feel looking down at a battle isn't only in the stars.

“I didn’t make you enrol in space-going Starfleet,” Jim says, rather childishly, indignant. “You’re taking this out on me.”

“You have a problem with my bedside manner?” McCoy demands. “Get your own damn license.”

“That’ll take me eight years,” Jim says, wincing as McCoy goes a smidgen gentler on the hypo, and then rubs at the surrounding skin. “Residency. A sacrificial lamb or two. I’ll have to give up recreational affairs here. I don’t know if it’s all that worth it.”

McCoy grunts at the slight on his social life. A man plays one game of chess with the artificial intelligence system and suddenly he’s on the risk list for Jim Kirk’s existential crisis intervention.

“So what’re your plans?” Jim asks. Never seems like he can keep quiet--maybe it bothers him. “For the holidays? You think you might be free to catch a few drinks with me soon as you get off shift?”

“I am not going anywhere with you, not until you present me an entire itinerary,” McCoy tells him. His bones are still reeling from the last disaster--running in interference in the middle of a fight Jim had been involved with. That, and the heart attack on Jim's medical file.

Jim grins as if that was easier than he thought. “I’ll buy.” He wriggles his eyebrows. “I got _paid._ ”

McCoy doesn’t even bother asking how he managed even a part-time job when Jim’s got a coarse load heavy enough that it could weigh itself on a scale. He probably does acrobatics with Andorians for all that McCoy knows.

Instead, he thinks about his plans: that is, the fact that he has no plans and was just planning to get drunk in dorms and stay inside and feel sorry for himself until he got tired of it. It's tempting. He'll be alone. No loud neighbours the next day. Hangover in peace and self-loathing aplenty the next day.

With Jim’s eyes on him, though, he decides it can’t get any worse. “You’d better listen to me when I tell you when it's cut off.”

Jim grins. "Uh huh."

At least with Jim Kirk, McCoy will have some justified reason to be cranky.

\--

And he does, because three hours later--and McCoy really wouldn’t be surprised how many times Jim chooses the worst times not to listen-- in Idaho. Jim’s got two shiners and a sprained wrist. McCoy might have bruises in the morning from impromptu intervention with people at least four years his junior trying to rip Jim's head from his shoulders, but that’s not important.

The fact that McCoy attributes this to a first time, and not the other times they've gone out for binge drinking or barhopping or whatever it is kids call it these days, is not important either.

What’s important is that somehow or another, McCoy is reeling from the alcohol, he’s smashed, and his ribs hurt, and goddammit, Jim, he should’ve brought the tricorder after all, thanks for taking it out of his bag and leaving it back in the dorms. He also doesn't understand why they had to go to different bars and couldn't just stay with the first one, but that's possibly the hindsight talking.

He settles for glaring at Jim instead because he can’t really be assed to make a comment right now, having just thrown up on the side of the road. McCoy can still taste it in his teeth and every time he swallows. They were in a _bar_. A nice, warm bar with seats.

Jim grins sheepishly at the look, offering a hand up. Winces when he realizes too late that it was the wrong one.

“You deserve it,” McCoy says, and regrets it when he hears the slurring. His lovely Standard pronunciation that he’s been working on for the first year has gone to shit.

“Why are you a doctor?” Jim demands, nursing his wrist. Suffering. Boo hoo for him. He won’t die. A little pain is good for the soul. McCoy clocked out four? Six? Hours ago. Off duty.

Then again, with Jim, you're always On somehow.

In the end, it’s what it is. You learn to get along with people, and somewhere along the line they become your best friend. It should be telling that McCoy doesn’t have many close friends his age because he keeps a wall between his heart and everything else, and that Jim is a person who keeps badgering you until you both reveal something that neither of you meant to share, and then whatever differences the two of you had are negligible over the fact that _you are both inherently the same._

Also, very different.

“Family practice,” McCoy grunts, instead of lingering on the fact he had to pause that long to say something. “Could say the same for you. Tell me again how you got into Starfleet?”

“Touché,” Jim says, and then nothing else, because, oh, that’s true, he doesn’t like to share what he’s thinking. Leave it to all the people to clean up after him and figure him out. Jim will grow up to be the most or least selfish man in the universe in the name of a good time.

Well, McCoy’s done with it. He’s had it.

“Give me your lap.”

Jim looks confused. “Sorry?”

“Lap,” McCoy grunts, far too drunk to deal with this now. He sits down where Jim is sitting against the wall. “Legs down. Crossed. You’ve been to kindergarten, right?”

There’s a moment’s pause before Jim obediently does so and McCoy puts his head down.

Then another.

There is a peaceful amount of quiet in which McCoy almost believes he could actually sleep like this.

Jim chooses to interrupt.

“You know,” Jim says carefully, as if awed by his own observation, “from this angle, you could be kind of cute.”

McCoy grunts, his eyes closed. “You look real ugly from mine, but that could be me.”

“Huh,” Jim says, and he’s laughing so hard the sound stops McCoy from passing out.

“What the damn hell is so funny?”

“I dunno,” Jim is saying, “Just. This whole thing.” When McCoy opens his eyes, Jim’s grinning down at him, alive. “You're the type of drunk to just cozy on up on everyone?”

McCoy is understandably really not in the mood. “I don’t get drunk in the middle of the week.” Unless he’s got a good reason for it. “An’ I’ve got a nice bottle of bourbon waiting for me back in my dorms. None of this Not Even Forty Percent shit.”

“It’s the holidays, Bones. Stop grumbling and live a little to pander to generally still-sober inducing alcohol content tastes.”

“The holidays means the damn shuttles have stopped working and I dare you to find a place that'll take us both in this late at night."

“Never roughed it?” Jim asks. “I mean, we could hitchhike now, but I think that’s a bad idea.”

McCoy snorts. “Kid, I lived in the country.”

“I grew up with elementary school trips to corn fields, how’s that?”

“If that’s your criteria, go ahead and hitchhike, but I’m not moving.”

Jim isn’t answering, so McCoy settles himself into something close to drowsy slumber, except Jim is saying, “...ou know what?

McCoy opens one eye because it is clear Jim wants him to answer. “What.”

“Bones,” Jim says, and his eyes are sparkling. The expression should not be attractive on a man with two developing panda eyes. “I may throw up on you.”

“Not on my face you won't,” McCoy grunts, and instead of getting off Jim’s lap like a normal person, just rolls so he lays his head on its side instead of the back on Jim’s thigh.

“What,” Jim is saying, and he’s laughing, “afraid it’ll stick in the grumpy, Southern frown lines?”

A part of McCoy wants to answer he doesn’t want Jim throwing up in his ear either, but he’s tired, his limbs are heavy, so he says something that betrays the modicum of truth he feels, and passes out.

The next morning, they’re on the first shuttle out of town, and McCoy’s yelling at Jim who somehow managed to make his sprain worse. Jim has the audacity to look both non-contrite and argue back with him.

\--

McCoy and Jim have what McCoy believes is somewhat of a love-tolerate relationship. In that Jim loves how McCoy deals with the self-proclaimed shit that comes with him (McCoy doesn't care what Jim comes with, he just cares that Jim is here), and McCoy has no idea what’s going on his own end, but it's not like he can leave the kid to crash and burn (and Jim somehow understands this intuitively). They get on well for the most part.

Sometimes, however, it isn’t all sunshine and flowers.

Jim’s a good person. He thrives on being a basic little shit to assholes, but he also earnestly does his best for other people.

What he won’t permit, though, is other people trying to do their best for him.

“Bones, I just need some time on my own,” he says, exasperated, the bags under his eyes darkened and the expression all wrong. “Just fix me up like you’re supposed to and let me cry in my pillow in my room or something.”

“Oh, absolutely,” McCoy snarls back, snaps, as he’s repositioning the hypo. "So you can walk out and then come straight back in within an hour on a stretcher. I'm sure you've made best friends with the paramedics by the shift, haven't you?"

Jim glowers. Not at all in the hateful way, but glowers with resentment in a way that McCoy could attribute to being told the truth. Usually Jim takes it in exasperated, annoyed stride.

"Don't get your diaper twisted in a knot," McCoy tells him, wondering if it's even worth it to argue. He can't really help it: compulsive worrying's what got him through medical school and residency. "Just sit pretty for fifteen minutes and then you can go home and knock yourself out. What happened, anyway? They said you started it."

"Just a little thing."

"About?"

"It's whatever."

McCoy has been getting ideas about what these whatevers could be. "Jim," he starts, "I know this isn't any of my business, but--"

“Thanks for always being so supportive," Jim snaps. "It's not like I plan all this just to be a pain in your ass."

It's a barbed comment, one that McCoy knows that Jim throws because he's uncomfortable, but it brings a weird feeling crawling up his spine. Sometimes Jim can get bad moods like anybody else; you just don't take it personally. Especially when McCoy knows that he's the only one who'll do it among the Yes-Men, and Jim needs someone who's going to call him out for getting hurt with no consideration for the consequences. 

Except Jim's knocking his hand away.

“Thanks,” Jim says flatly. “Really.”

“Jim—”

“McCoy,” Jim says politely, and brushes past him to leave.

McCoy has half a mind to yell after him, but decides: be an adult. He’s tired anyway. Let him have time to take his head out of his ass.

\--

McCoy doesn’t see Jim for weeks, and at first it's a relief and then it quickly feels like some kind of punishment. McCoy is thirty-two fucking years old and he really doesn’t need to be playing the Best Friend Olympics. The dramatics that come with being Jim’s best friend aren't always worth it.

He doesn't even realize he keeps looking and expecting someone in his room after hours. Or why he checks the logs only to be fed up enough to lock the system down. Or why he keeps waking up the middle of the night to every little tap outside that could be Jim. McCoy has a goddamn life outside of Jim Kirk. He has classes. He deals with blood and the results of the painfully bad decisions of people entering the clinic. He's survived Joanna's teething and Jocelyn's divorce court and a free trial to burning up in a sad excuse for the world's most expensive space faring coffin.

Fuck, Jim.

He scrubs a hand over his face, and breathes in, before he goes on his comm to text him first.

_You dead yet?_

Weeks later, Jim's reply of _Half my classmates probably wish_ answers his twisting stomach, and by God does McCoy wish someone taught the man how to communicate. Because then he finds out Jim's gotta go off-planet training for a while, and McCoy isn't even going to see him for longer.

\--

They’re talking actively again in between the gaps of time Jim can spare, which McCoy supposes, in Jim’s little world, means that McCoy is available at every opportunity to spend his free time chatting so that Jim can have an as asinine excuse to absorb his energy to do whatever it is Jim Kirk does when he’s not in class up there, swapping body fluids with the most sex-positive members of their species, or getting hurt nine ways to Sunday and refusing to take his care seriously.

He tries not to let it get to him, remind himself why he's here in San Francisco, learning about xenobiology and the problems space surgery might turn up. Why he's even going studying to go off-world for months on end when he could just have easily as settled at a hospital in some forsaken town that wouldn't know his name.

Space is the only place Jocelyn never touched and never will touch, so help him. Space is unknown and unfamiliar, dangerous and reckless. Space is where McCoy can get a grip on himself and hope Jo might forgive him in some distant future. Space is uncharted territory, and it's the only place left for McCoy that'll keep him insane enough to be sane.

And space, if McCoy's going to be honest about it, is also where Jim is headed and he's got to be there too.

\--

At the end of the day, Jim does come to him (outside of complaining about teachers, how everyone seems to have it out for him--they don't, it's just because Jim can be a colossal pain in the ass) when it matters, and oh, by God, does it matter. It’s a little bit of a month after.

The door opens easily when McCoy returns back from a heavy night shift. Jim has the light on and his shoes kicked off at the door, legs crossed and reading from one of McCoy's PADDs.

McCoy is not angry, bitter, or any combination of any negative, pervasive emotion at all. Oh no, he’s actually quite fine with this.

“I look like the second reckoning of getting beat the hell up,” Jim says, but he’s laughing.

"From my vantage point, you look like you deserve another punch to the face. Might help your looks."

“You’re _terrible_ ,” Jim tells him, looking a striking contrast of hassled and amused until McCoy ignores him and his playful peanut gallery commentary in favor of rummaging through his baggage (hasn't even had time to unpack, nor the energy, how long has it been since he moved in) for a scanner. “You know, if you’re unhappy, you can just say so. And,” he adds, when McCoy looks at him, “we gotta figure out a time when any bad blood expires between us. The door says you locked me out.”

His voice is so casual, but McCoy knows Jim is testing out the line. And probably also hurt. McCoy doesn't answer until he's brought out the dermal regenerator.

“Don’t I feel blessed to be told we need to renegotiate this relationship.” Maybe a bit of his drawl comes in. Jim’s not in communications, but he’s got a good ear for how McCoy’s drawl increases when he’s angry or stressed, because Jim just grins sheepishly at him, him with his purpling swollen eye and still gash from the dermal-regen session. Never mind the lacerations on the back of his head.

“I can go, if you want?”

“No,” McCoy says, with the patience of a thousand saints, because they’ve been through this, and McCoy understands him better than most people; if Jim thinks he’s unwelcome, he’ll leave. Sometimes it’s a matter of dramatics. Sometimes, you need to act selfish with Jim Kirk so he'll stop being so selfless, because he thinks he's doing it for you. “You’ll stop driving me out of my mind when I say.”

Drives him less out of his mind thinking about their argument and wondering how in the hell Jim could just walk out and walk right back in as though nothing had happened. It bothers McCoy that it seems he's the only one that cares.

“I’m not that bad.”

“You could've had a concussion.”

Jim gives him a look that reads _So?_

If McCoy pretends hard enough, he can pretend that his headache does not exist the same way Jim seems to pretend that the dangers of brain damage don't. He’s more relieved than he can say, for starters, so he hides it in his attitude.

“Dermal regens can’t fix everything,” McCoy says. “Take several days for the bruises too, because you’re in for some real pain tomorrow.” He claps Jim on the shoulder. “Can’t wait for you to tell me how right I was.”

“What if I like pain?”

God forbid. “Your reactions to my hypos say a different story."

“You should be careful, Bones,” Jim laughs, and for some unexplainable reason, the tension in shoulders has relaxed. “If you aren’t, people will start to think you care.”

“And God help me.” McCoy frowns, suddenly hit by a thought. “What do you care about what other people think?”

Jim gives him a strange look like he always does when McCoy doesn’t make sense to him. “I don’t,” he says, and something about that makes him feel defensive, because his words are clipped and somewhat jaded, and if McCoy wasn’t good at picking up small bits of body language in the time they’ve known each other, he’d learn fast anyway because it’s Jim, and god forbid apparently that McCoy give a damn.

“But?” McCoy prompts, because he’s terrible at leaving things alone.

Jim falters, as McCoy keeps quiet and waits, as if he isn't sure what he was so tense about or what he's supposed to say because McCoy hasn't given him anything to go on.

“If you do, it’s fine,” Jim says eventually, scratching at his neck. McCoy grabs his hand. “Aww, Bones,” he simpers, as though that mere act of sharing his thoughts was too much for him, “did you miss me?”

“Don’t scratch,” McCoy says. “It won’t heal right if you do.”

“Sure,” Jim replies languidly, and maybe he senses that McCoy’s really not in the mood, because he obediently turns his head for him to run the scanner again. “Can’t have Starfleet’s prime star cadet out of play, right?”

“You want to tell me how this happened?”

“Who cares?” Jim shrugs. “If you’re worried for the future, don’t. Made sure it was off-campus. If I make Captain, I’ll have you on as the CMO, promise.”

“That’s not what I mean,” McCoy snaps, temper flaring, for some reason or another he can’t place. "Why don't you ever take this seriously?"

“I get hurt all the time in bar fights, Bones,” Jim replies calmly, sardonic. Jovial. Like it's a point of pride and it's cute that McCoy is getting emotions over this. “It’s a thing.”

“You only start fights if they start it first, Jim. I know you.”

“I just came back from space-field training, Bones. I’m tired. Some assholes at port wouldn’t leave someone alone. Or, I needed someone to give me an adrenaline rush because it was boring out there. What do you want me to say?” Jim huffs out a wry, relaxed laugh for himself, in the way he does when something he’s guessed comes true, and McCoy has no idea what hypothesis he’s confirmed. “I didn’t know therapy was what I signed up for.”

It's so light, the way Jim says his words, and he says them with a small smile. But it doesn't feel right to McCoy, even though this is the dynamic they've carved for themselves.

Honesty is the best policy, and that’s what McCoy’s always stuck by. “I’m a doctor as much as I’m a psychiatrist,” he snaps. “So if you don’t want me to do my damn job, what else am I here for?” Jim opens his mouth. “Don’t answer that. I want you to just reflect real deep, maybe put whatever's in your head to use.”

“I have a perfectly good brain, if you’re trying to say otherwise,” Jim says, offended, instead of responding to McCoy’s heart-felt sentiment. Because of course.

McCoy snorts. “Not the way you’ve been acting. Open wider.”

“Hah.” Jim grins, but he obliges; they’re sliding back to the camaraderie he’s used to—the snipes, the jabs, McCoy’s firm cantankerousness instead of his reassurances.

“Your teeth are shit,” Mccoy informs him. “Are you brushing properly?”

Jim laughs. It brightens his face, makes McCoy really see how young he is and realize he doesn’t see Jim laugh like that often. Sure, there are sly smiles and self-assured, smug juvenile grins, but this is different. “What, you're a dentist now?"

“I’m a doctor,” McCoy corrects, snapping the light shut and letting him go. “On occasion I am a surgeon. Otherwise, I’m your friend. And--” He cuts himself off.

Jim hesitates, grin faltering before it returns. He squints up at McCoy. For a moment, McCoy thinks he's going to ask. Thinks, yeah, it's about time.

“Well, bet Joanna is confused about the conflict,” Jim says instead. Brings up Joanna like it's nothing. It hits McCoy then, how often he's around when she comms that he can say that. That Jim can know so much about his own life and McCoy still only has the briefest of bits he's put together. That Jim would let McCoy do the surface level of taking care of him but never let him through further, and yet Jim gets to choose how much he gets involved with McCoy's life.

“She knows enough,” McCoy grunts. Hoping, somehow, the drop of his stomach doesn't give away on his face. “And she’s better at following through with checkups than I can say for you.”

“I like Doctor Anson,” Jim argues, wincing as he stretches out his jaw. “Something about all my dad issues summed up in one person seems kind of relevant. I just don't want to disappoint the guy.”

“Jim—” Make me your damn primary doctor, McCoy wants to say. So it's fine with me because what, McCoy wants to ask. Jim. Just talk to me.

“Thanks, Bones.” Jim’s not listening anymore. He grabs his jacket. “I’ll get out of your hair now.”

“Like hell you are. Grab a pillow. You’re bunking here for tonight where I can keep an eye on you.”

They’re friends—Jim wormed his way into McCoy’s heart and he’s stuck there, but between the weeks they haven’t spoken, it feels so new now, like McCoy has to relearn everything that he already knows when it comes to Jim Kirk. Funny. McCoy realizes he’s missed Jim.

Jim smiles. Charming. Twinkle in his eye like he's expected nothing else, but whatever he sees in McCoy's expression stilts it. He grows unsure, somehow ashamed.

He'd better, McCoy decides, as he grabs at the flashlight in his kit. This isn't a joke.

“I don’t get you, you know,” Jim says, awkwardly. “You won’t let me visit your daughter with you, but you’ll let me come crashing at your room at ass o’clock in the morning.”

“It’s not that Joanna won’t like you visiting,” McCoy says. He thinks about all the questions. All the things people might think. McCoy's not against the two of them meeting, but there's something raw about the fact that Joanna represents one life and Jim represents another. It's disquieting, the fact that Jim might learn more parts of McCoy that McCoy's not prepared to give up without an exchange. “It’s a little harder than that.”

“What with your promising career and all. All those years lost, huh?” It’s stilted, the kind of way Jim was the last time they had an emotional talk about each other’s lives, and that resulted in Jim avoiding him for weeks and weeks until he was shipped out to fulfill his off-planetary training requirement, and McCoy was at first relieved with the peace before he was out of his mind with worry.

Hell, McCoy’s not even going to bother asking how Jim knows about it. Instead, he snaps the foldable light out to shine it in those blue eyes. “So help me, Jim,” he says, and he doesn’t know anymore. “I’ll handle space. I’ll take anything you want to give me. I’ll follow you to the goddamn fucking other end of the universe because at least someone’s gotta look out for that side of you who doesn’t. But I’d rather you be here and now—that won’t change.”

He isn’t upset-furious about the fact that Jim always refuses to go to the hospital; that frustration was pervasive in the beginning, yes. By now, McCoy’s just glad Jim comes to him–in fact, better Jim get used to it, because if McCoy finds so much as a damn bruise out of place that doesn’t have a good explanation, he’ll drive himself up the wall.

There’s something about what McCoy said though, the something that seems to stick because Jim doesn’t say anything at all for a time.

“Cat got your tongue?”

Jim doesn’t even so much flinch at McCoy’s thumb at the edge of his bruising or at the small jibe, but he does squint, blink, and frown at the light. “ _Bones_ ,” he says, suddenly, voice so _empathetic_ , and what is it with this kid and giving nicknames? Mr. Cupcake Hendorff comes to mind. He’s lucky McCoy has grown fond of him.

McCoy gives in, though, because Jim has never been known for his patience or his comfort when it comes to personal matters; he’s reactive. Put him in a command situation and he’s good, but put him in a place where he has to respond to someone telling him they care, and he’s no better than a newborn foal trying to walk for the first time.

“Calm your bleeding heart,” McCoy replies, tone blunt as he tilts Jim’s head back. The times where Jim will let McCoy do whatever the hell he wants is the type of case that scares him the most. He’s better than that to let himself show it; he’s a doctor. “You don’t owe me an explanation of anything in the end, I get it.”

Jim offers an unclear smile. “I—”

“Rhetorical statement,” McCoy replies.

Jim licks his lips. McCoy’s eyes flicker to it, and then at Jim, who’s looking at him, and not looking away.

In the beginning of all this, the first time McCoy dragged his drunk, beaten up ass back to his dorms, Jim flirted the entire way until it was very clear that McCoy only brought him there to patch him up. And Jim stared. He’d stare, kept an eye on him as if he wasn’t sure what it was that McCoy meant, McCoy had put up with it the first three times until he’d snapped and said if Jim had a problem with it, he could go earn his own medical license. After that, it’d been like something had eased in between them, and Jim came directly to him after a rough night.

“Does it hurt?” McCoy asks him, instead of anything else. It comes out kinder. Betrays how much they’re at this precarious balance.

Maybe, a small part of him thinks, they’re both bad at responding to unexpected statements of intimacy. Because they reveal exactly how much they actually think of each other that they’re here now.

And maybe McCoy should start writing harlequin novels. Intimacy with Jim Kirk. What a concept.

Except--

“So now you ask?” Jim waves him off with that lazy grin, the kind that keeps stopping hearts and maybe took McCoy’s along with it. “It stopped throbbing around the time you stopped yelling at me. Pavlov’s healing.”

He grins at McCoy, because Jim Kirk is the kind of man to complain about something small, but will try to charm his way out of it while he’s slowly dying of pain on the inside.

“You,” McCoy says, and because he’s been feeling the effects of their goddamned Jim-imposed exile from each other, because you don’t just do that to people, Jim, you don’t, you take the good and the bad and what the hell is McCoy supposed to think when you show up at oh-five hundred in the morning acting like nothing is wrong, he sighs. Puts his tricorder down.

Jim looks questioningly as McCoy pulls up the sheet and then nudges him over. “Bones?”

“Move a bit,” McCoy says bluntly. "Or go to the other bed, I don't give a shit. It’s been a long day, and I’m going to go pass out now.”

He can’t deal with this now.

He doesn't think can ever.

But he sleeps, well enough, better enough, than he has for a full month, and if he has to think about it, he's not going to.

\--

It surprises him that Jim's still here in the morning.

"Heya."

"You're still here?" McCoy asks, stupidly.

Jim licks his lips. McCoy’s eyes flicker to them, and then at Jim, who’s looking at him, and not looking away, just like last night.

Careful, Jim lifts up a cup. "I made you coffee?"

\--

Jim casually, very _casually_ , stays over the next night. Some excuse about, _If I suffer an allergic reaction, you're going to kill me about it anyway, right?_ But McCoy's had a hard shift that day so he grunts, and Jim grins, and it's fine.

They need each other, and it’s the raw, almost selfish part of it as much as it is giving. McCoy will admit that much. There's a pull whenever they're apart. There's relief and comfort whenever they're together. It's not in McCoy's head; he has eyes, can see everything from Jim's body language, the fluctuations of his voice, the way he starts to try to sneakily move his own stuff in like he doesn't think McCoy notices.

McCoy used to think he'd be fine being placed on a different ship than Jim. Some roads meet but all roads must part eventually.

But McCoy isn't going to lie that knowing Jim doesn't have intracranial hemorrhage helps him sleep at night. And it's nice, in some form of it, to sleep hearing someone else breathing in the same room again.

\--

And Jim shows up another night.

“Fancy that,” Jim says, lounging on the couch. "That I am here. The desired company."

McCoy rolls his eyes and says, "The unwanted furniture. Get your sweaty ass off my bed."

"I showered!"

"Shoes off," McCoy snaps, ignoring the protests as he's shedding his cadet reds into something more comfortable. On shift, he's in scrubs and a coat, but he never lingers long enough at the clinic to take a shower. Paranoid part of him, for all that he knows the robot cleaners will sanitize better than any human being. Now the collar's just been digging into his neck for a while. "Off my bed."

"I'm thinking dinner," Jim says, voice a little softer as McCoy slides on some--"You own jogging pants?"

"Probably yours," McCoy says, "but they were in my laundry, so now they're mine." They're not as loose on him as they are on Jim, but they're already miles better than starched up pants he now has to put up. There's a brief pause. McCoy glances up, because Jim doesn't go quiet unless he's either planning something or he's hyperfocused on something. "You were saying something about dinner?"

Come to think of it, McCoy would kill for a good stir fry right now.

Jim coughs out a choked, "Yeah?", scratching the back of his head. He looks off, looking a bit troubled. "Uh. I know a good place for takeout."

"Okay," McCoy says. "Give me the name. You enjoy your meal."

"What?"

"What?" McCoy repeats. "What do you mean what?"

"I mean." Jim shrugs his shoulders, sitting up slowly. "You wanna eat in the cafeteria? You always complain about the _'glop that passes for_ _nutrition_ ' if it's been made in the replicator."

McCoy's lost track of this conversation. "Why would I be eating in the cafeteria? I just said to give me the name of that takeout place."

Jim presses his lips. "Okay, I don't know how to say this casually, but I thought we were going to have dinner together."

"Why, you don't have a list of hopefuls to have dinner with?"

"As if." Jim rolls his eyes, gets up and hunkers down to root through one of McCoy's cupboards. Which really leaves a man to wonder how often Jim Kirk has been lounging and wandering around as if he's McCoy's roommate. "Yeah, you've still got some brandy left. What goes well with brandy?"

"Oh hell no." McCoy storms over and yanks it out of Jim's hand. "This is emergency brandy."

"You save alcohol for emergencies?" Jim raises his hands up. He twirls around and then lands back on McCoy's bed, despite all the times McCoy has told him no street clothes on. "Talk about functional alcoholism, Bones. If you're not careful, that'll go to your liver." But there's an expression in his eyes.

"What's wrong?" McCoy asks. "You want some liquid courage to tell me your feelings about quitting?" Starfleet. Academy, he means.

“You know I can’t quit you,” Jim says, but instead of being saucy like he probably intended, it’s softer, voice lower. He freezes.

McCoy doesn’t.

“All right,” he says, over the lump that’s suddenly in his throat.

Jim looks like he wishes he could take it back, and don’t that hurt some. “Wow,” Jim says, after a beat, “that really came out. So weird, right? Haha.”

“Jim—”

Jim has hopped off the bed. “I’ve got a bright and early day tomorrow. I’ll hit the sack. Night, Bones,” he says. His quick-thinking ass would've probably made it out the door too had McCoy not rolled his eyes hard and grabbed him back by his wrist.

"Do we need to talk about the birds and the bees?" he asks, wryly.

"It was supposed to be a joke," Jim says as McCoy releases him, just as shook by how cliche this is all getting. Or maybe unnerved because he's finally being put to task about explaining himself. "I was joking. But then I saw you, and," Jim shakes his head.

This shouldn't take the lump out of McCoy's throat, but it does. Warmth slides into his stomach.

Of course, Jim has to ruin that. "Shit, Bones, it came out the wrong way." He licks his lips and turns around, leaning against the doorframe. As if them having a conversation with the door open where all the other dorm residents can hear isn't troubling to him, but just expressing the fact that McCoy means something to him is enough to freak him out. "It's not your looks--"

"Thanks." Surprisingly, it hurts less.

Jim shoots him a dirty look. "That's not what I mean. And I know there's stuff with your ex-wife--"

"Jocelyn." McCoy is starting to get an idea of where this is going.

"--and Joanna's great, I really like her--"

"She's a good kid," McCoy agrees.

"I--how do I explain this."

All at once, it's hilarious to McCoy. This whole situation, this whole set-up. For all Jim is a giant pain in McCoy's ass.

Jim keeps looking at McCoy as if all the answers are in his face. Maybe they are.

"I give a shit if you live or die," McCoy offers, quietly.

"Yes?" Jim blinks. "Well, me too. But that's not it. Bones, it's not like I don't want to jump you. I don't want to ruin this. I'm happy with this. You're--" He's rubbing his mouth, shifting on his feet. "Look, let's just drop it. This is so weird to talk about."

"If that works for you."

"You're being way too agreeable, Bones. You should complain about how stupid I am more."

"Great. We agree you're an idiot." McCoy turns on his heel. "Now get inside and close the damn door. I'm not someone who shares."

"Why? Takeout's-- _oh_."

\--

Jim's not someone to say these things, but he lets McCoy trespass a little more, and if he spends his nights in McCoy's dorm more than his own, well. McCoy's not going to complain.

As it stands, McCoy's instincts were right about Jim the first time he laid eyes on him.

Jim's trouble, and McCoy's involved, and he's going to regret it, but it's nothing compared to regretting not being a part of it.

_End._

\--

**Bonus 1:**

\--

Jim may be pretty smart, but when McCoy mouths his way down him pretty slowly, he takes time to get the hint.

"What're you doing?" Jim demands, though by the angling of his hips, he isn't really saying no.

"Making you feel better," McCoy replies. "If you want, I can give my expertise as a primary care physician that sex is good for you."

"Are you really playing the," Jim's breath hitches a little when McCoy's hand gets into his pants. "Well, I'm for it."

\--

**Bonus 2, maybe a few years down the line:**

McCoy is a nagger. You become one, when you bleed a real love for humanity and the idiot geniuses that come stringing along with it. Some folks respond a little bit better when you repeat what the little voice in their head’s been saying with a bit more gruff and southern. Others are more recalcitrant than the average person; McCoy’s good with both. The only thing he's terrible at is navigating the ever large challenge of those who work busy jobs: making time for the family and the spouse. Being that Jocelyn's out of the equation, you'd think it'd be easier.

“Self-care,” Jim repeats slowly, like this is the first time he’s heard of the word.

“Oh for crying out loud,” McCoy snaps, and forces the Ugly Sweater over Jim’s head.

McCoy is six years Jim’s elder. It says a lot that Jim is the one guy who would rather jump headfirst into a life-or-death situation than evaluate his personal feelings, whereas McCoy spends every second moment thinking about how much he could have said, how much he wish he had said, and feels so much about what he feels.

“If you love me,” Jim says, muffled, before they find some way to pop his head through it, “you’ll let me take this off before I leave.” His hair is mussed up, and he looks as fake-indignant as ever, even as he allows McCoy to lower the hem on his torso, quite possibly filing this away in Things to Deny About later.

“Hate to break it to you, Jim,” McCoy says jovially, patting Jim's rather generous midsection, “but this here is a bonafide Joanna Rebecca McCoy original. You sure you want to break a little girl’s heart like that?”

Jim blinks, looks down, and then looks up. “I can’t believe you hid her gift from me all this time,” he hisses, accusingly. "I can't believe you tell me this now after I've put it on. I can't believe I can't take it off now or else some sort of McCoy curse is going to happen. You _know_ I'm never going to throw this away now. You can't use your daughter like that. This is unfair play, Bones."

“I didn’t plan anything.”

“She’s _adorable_ , Bones,” Jim gushes. "She's so opinionated, just like you. I'll never say no."

"Go to bed on time."

"Don't you dare make her tell me that."

**Author's Note:**

> Old fic that I cleaned up because I was rooting for substantial WIPs for the Good Intentions WIP fest--but because this one wraps up-ish okay, I think it's fine to put it down as a finished one.


End file.
